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The publication of Tintern Abbey, Co. Wexford: Cistercians and Colcloughs. Excavations 1982-2007 is the fifth instalment in the Department of Heritage and Local
Government’s internationally peer reviewed Archaeological Monograph Series. The
abbey was founded in 1200 by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, and quickly
became one of the most important Cistercian foundations on the island. After
its dissolution the abbey, and the majority of its lands, passed to Sir Anthony
Colclough (pronounced Cokelee). The site remained in the family until 1959, and
was vested in the Commissioners of Public Works in 1963.

In Section 1, Lynch places the abbey within
its physical and historical setting. While the introduction to the Cistercians
is excellent, the portion dealing with the tenure of the Colclough family
superb and is very much brought to life with reproductions of paintings and
photographs from the early 17th century to the beginning of the 20th
century. Section 2 begins with a description of the state of the medieval
buildings at the time of its transfer to the Commissioners of Public Works.
Further subsections examine the building history of the abbey church and the
cloister gateway, including various additions and modifications carried out by
the Colclough family. Of particular interest are detailed examinations of
sections of surviving Elizabethan panelling in the crossing tower. The portion
dealing with the history of the conservation works on the site is particularly
fascinating. The works here were carried out in three major phases over
approximately 40 years. Each phase of conservation represents different
approaches to the problems at hand and illustrates the changing nature of ‘best
practice’ over several decades. The archaeological excavations (Section 3) were
primarily intended to facilitate the conservation of the site. These were
carried out in various phases from the early 1980s, the early to mid 1990s and
in 2006-7. This section is profusely illustrated with colour and monochrome
photographs and detailed site excavation plans and section drawings. In
particular, the use of shading to differentiate between Cistercian and
Colclough phases of construction is very useful and adds to the general clarity
of the information being presented. While I have a personal penchant for
archaeological illustration, I would single out examples of the two-light
lancet window in the chancel (Fig. 9) and the reconstructed elevation of the
cloister arcade (Fig. 33) (both by R. Stapleton) as items of art in their own right.
The excavations revealed numerous details of the structural development and
alterations to the structures, during the tenures of both the Cistercians and
the Colcloughs. This significant body of data is placed within the twin
contexts of other excavated Cistercian monasteries and the post-dissolution
history of the site.

The excavated burials are examined in
Section 4. While there appears to have been no burials to the north of the
church, human remains appear to have been interred almost everywhere else. In
the absence of grave goods or reliable stratigraphy, six skeletons were
radiocarbon dated. One burial, an adolescent from the Lady Chapel, dated to the
late 13th to 14th centuries. The dated burials from the
west ambulatory occurred during the 14th and 15th
centuries, while those from the nave, chancel, and south transept dated to the
late 15th to early 16th centuries. While four of these
determinations are investigated further by Gault in Appendix III, the raw dates
are not provided for the remaining two. In all, the associated meta data for
this body of dates is, to my mind, incomplete and prevents its incorporation
into future research projects. I realise that I am quite pedantic on this point
[see also here], but I firmly believe that archaeological dates have a
viability outside the particular research project that they were created for,
but only if the fullest amount of information possible is provided with them in
print. Between all phases of excavation, some 106 whole or partial skeletons
were recovered. Burials in the nave and chancel were dominated by adult males,
though adult females were more frequent in the transept and ambulatory.
However, in the chapel, only non-adults were recovered. Examination of the
non-adults (below 18 years) indicated that 48.5% did not survive beyond their 5th
year. Of the adults, 52 of the 65 sexed skeletons could be given a
determination of age. It appears that, for both sexes, the majority of deaths
were in the ‘younger adults’ category, with relatively few individuals
surviving into advanced old age. Interrogation of the data by age and burial
location suggests deliberate segregation. While males were buried in
practically every part of the church, the chancel was the preferred location
for younger males. Similarly, adult females were buried in most parts of the
church, but a distinct preference is shown for younger females to be buried in
the nave. An examination of the surviving teeth indicates that ante-mortem
tooth loss accounted for nearly 17% of all recovered teeth. Dental caries were
observed in 69% of the population, a particularly high figure for any society
living before the introduction of refined sugars. There is also evidence for
the presence of calculus, abscesses, periodontal disease, and enamel hypoplasia.
Degenerative joint disease was also common among the recovered skeletal
remains, but with females slightly less affected than males. While these are
indicators that the individuals led quite harsh lives, full of physical
activity, analysis of the women suggested that they frequently carried loads on
their heads. A number of skeletons exhibited evidence for healed fractures, and
three males carried evidence of sharp-force trauma, suggesting that at least
two of them came to violent ends. Overall, the general health of this
population was poor and the people buried here may have suffered periodic
episodes of biological stress, especially the females. The higher prevalence of
enamel hypoplasia among females is taken to suggest that, from an early age, females
were less well fed than males. This situation may also have persisted
throughout their adult lives. Excluding fragments of architectural stone, some
1900 artefacts were recovered during the excavations (Section 5). While I do
not intend to list even all the categories of finds, a number do stand out.
While various Cistercian rules forbade the use of wall paintings, quite a
substantial corpus of painted plaster fragments were recovered, though it is
difficult to visualise the original design. A number of fragments of medieval
stained glass were recovered, all the more beautiful for their rarity. As one
would imagine with a site of this type, the pottery remains take up a sizeable
portion of the text. The types recovered include Leinster Cooking Ware, various
Wexford-type wares, along with Saintonge and transitional types. The entire
corpus spans the period from the late 12th to the 16th
centuries. Among the recovered metalwork, the stand-out piece is a silver ring
brooch of 13th to 14th century date. This entire section
dealing with the finds is well presented, logically laid out and well
illustrated. Not only does it present the recovered artefacts in a
well-researched and attractive format, but it will easily become a ready
reference for future excavations and for excavators seeking comparanda. Many of
the illustrations in this section were prepared by Patricia Johnson and are
among the finest examples of archaeological illustration in print. Section 6
presents the final discussions and conclusions, and attempts to draw together
all the strands of the previous sections. The text is embellished with a number
of reconstructions of what the abbey must have looked like in its heyday.
Various discussions of the surrounding farmland of the abbey, and the lifestyle
and economy of the people are also presented. The evolution of the abbey is
charted through the centuries until its dissolution and granting to the
Colcloughs and eventually into state care. In the final portion of this section
Lynch assesses the unresolved questions raised by the excavations, and lists
further profitable avenues of exploration and research.

In Section 7 Tietzsch-Tyler, the artist
responsible for the wonderful reconstruction drawings, details the research
that went into creating these fantastic images. While this is an important
aspect of all reconstructions, it is rarely explicitly stated and dissected in
this way. My only quibble would be that this deserved to be treated as an
appendix, rather than a fully-fledged section, as it (to my mind, at least)
breaks up the flow of the narrative. Nonetheless, this form of examination of
the evidence and sources that make up the reconstruction drawings is important,
and I would encourage its use in future projects. The volume also presents a number
of appendices. Gault’s interrogation of some of the radiocarbon dates in a
Bayesian framework, utilising the OxCal program, has been mentioned above.
McCormick analysis of the small corpus of faunal remains identified
sheep/goats, pigs, cow, horse, cat, dog, ox and a number of wild animal types.
The assemblage is dominated by sheep/goats, and is taken to indicate evidence
for the traditional Cistercian practice of sheep rearing. Although not ruling
out the possibility that the representatives of cat, dog, otter, and fox were
food items (especially in times of scarcity), it seems more likely that they
were exploited for their pelts. Brown and Baillie report on the
dendrochronological dating of a number of the recovered timbers. Samples from a
number of large beams from the tower last grew in 1569, being felled either in
the winter of that year, or the following spring. Portions of the panels were
more difficult to date, but are estimated to have been felled around 1610.

Despite my objections to the presentation
of the radiocarbon data and the placement of Section 7, I find little else to
criticise. The text and illustrations combine to present a logical and
well-balanced report on the excavations, firmly placed in the changing contexts
of the Cistercians and the Colcloughs. It is a beautifully produced book that
deserves its place in the distinguished Archaeological Monograph Series. I can
only look forward to further high quality publications in the series.

The
publicity literature surrounding The Dublin Region in the Middle Ages: Settlement, Land-use and Economy
describes it as ‘the first major publication of the Discovery Programme’s
Medieval Rural settlement Project’ … and major it is in every sense. The first
thing that struck myself and others when we saw it at the Discovery Programme
book stall at the recent INSTAR conference was its sheer physical presence.
There were several jokes about not putting your back out trying to lift it and
not letting it fall on you etc. While
such comments are to be expected, its physical mass and volume are the smallest
things about it. In the Preface, MRSP Project Director, Niall Brady, sets out
the research framework for the current volume. The landscape encompassed is
impressive: the entirety of Dublin city and its hinterland, up to 30km. The
model used was based on the ‘Feeding the City’ project, developed by the Centre
for Metropolitan History at the Institute for Historical Research, University
of London. Where the MRSP approach exceeds the ‘Feeding the City’ project is
not just in its commitment to including archaeological data into the synthesis,
but describing it as ‘the essential driving force of the present study’. Brady argues
that the ‘objective and factual insights’ of the archaeological data inform
aspects of the discussion unavailable to the written sources alone. These
include questions of diet, trade and exchange, as well as industrial processes.

In
Part I, Chapter 1 introduces the project and defines its overriding aim as ‘to
construct a picture of the medieval landscape and settlement features of the
area using a wide range of archaeological and documentary sources’. The chapter
also describes the spatial limits of the study zone and introduces the
background geological and soil systems of the area. It is only with Chapter 2
that one begins to appreciate the scale of the undertaking when the
archaeological and historical sources consulted are laid out. I find it quite
charming that the first sentences of the chapter are so understated as to be
almost apologetic. They simply state that the present volume ‘did not involve
any new excavations or large-scale fieldwork’. There is a beautiful simplicity,
close to a tacit apology, in the description of the work as ‘essentially a
desktop study’. It is only when one is presented with the breadth, depth and
sheer variety of sources that the authors had to work with and that an
appreciation can be gained of the scale of the data mountain the project had to
climb. The available records are presented and briefly assessed, highlighting both
its strengths and weaknesses.

Part
II, dealing with the topic of Settlement and Society, begins with Chapter 3, an
examination of the Dublin region before the Anglo Norman incursion in 1170. The
chapter sets out the argument that, prior to 1170, the Norsemen were in control
of a substantial Kingdom that encompassed all of modern County Dublin and parts
of Counties Kildare and Wicklow. The authors chart the progress from the
construction of the original longphort in 814, and assorted military forts,
through the foundation of Dublin in 917 and its swift development into a
vibrant trading and manufacturing centre. By this time the agricultural
hinterland supporting the city was essentially coextensive with modern County
Dublin. The development of Dublin town was effectively paralleled in the rise
of ecclesiastical power from a dependency of Glendalough diocese in 1111 to
full status as an independent archdiocese in 1152. By the arrival of the Anglo
Normans the Cistercians and Augustinians had a sizable presence in the town
and, along with the Archbishop, held extensive properties in the hinterland.
The chapter raises, but is unable to answer, the question of the numbers of
Scandinavians living in rural Dublin. While there is ample evidence that the
Kings of Dublin effectively controlled large portions of the surrounding
countryside, there is little documentary support to define whether the
residents were native Irish or planted Norse. Finally, the chapter sets the
political scene and how the various machinations and changes of allegiance led
to the banishment of Diarmait Mac Murchada to Bristol. Once Mac Murchada returned
to Dublin with the support of his Anglo Norman allies, the Scandinavian
influence on the region was brought to a swift and merciless conclusion.
Chapter 4 examines patterns of land ownership after 1170 and up to the
beginning of the 17th century. Interestingly, there is much
continuity in land holding patterns, especially in terms of ecclesiastical and
monastic power. While virtually all the existing orders maintained or increased
their holdings, new continental orders were also heavily endowed with grants of
land. Throughout this period, the single largest landowner was the Archbishop
of Dublin, who by the early 13th century had acquired the land of
bishopric and abbey of Glendalough. Similarly, Baronial families established
Strongbow and de Lacy were long-lived and retained large tracts of land over
many generations. In Chapter 5, Defence and Fortification, the authors
demonstrate that the region was among the most heavily defended in medieval
Ireland. The chronological span of castle building is investigated, running
form the late 12th to the 17th centuries, as are the
fluctuating motivations (defence, aesthetics, ostentation etc.) behind the need and desire to build. In a comprehensive
survey of the earthwork castles, it emerges that the earliest mottes were
frequently sited at existing nodal points, such as settlements and
ecclesiastical centres, many of which went on to develop as significant
regional centres. While many mottes were built by individual lords, an analysis
of their regional distribution shows that together they formed a protective
cordon around the city. This suggests to the authors that, in the early portion
of the Anglo Norman tenure at least, there was a centralised defence policy in
operation. Finally the authors examine the number and variety of castles built
in the region as a function of the multiplicity power forms, including the
Crown, the archbishop and various lordly families. The multi-faceted
functionality of these establishments (from rural fortifications to
administrative centres and storehouses) and their evolution over time is also
examined. Manor centres, tenants and rural settlement is the subject of Chapter
6. Here the authors rely mostly on good documentary sources for manorial
centres, as the archaeological evidence is relatively scarce. Again, manors varied
widely in terms of their size and the numbers, type and construction of their
buildings, along with being populated by a wide assortment of tenants. Many
tenants were imported from England and Wales, but there is evidence for the
continued presence of both native Irish and Scandinavian smallholders. The
authors conclude that while there is evidence that rural Dublin was relatively
densely populated (especially in the 13th century), the location and
nature of their residences remains elusive. Chapter 7, examining the Church, identified
over 300 medieval churches and chapels within the study area. They see the
evolution of the parish church as a centre for tithe-rendering being closely
linked to the development of Anglo Norman manorial estates. While there was a
profusion of parish churches, religious houses and hospitals appear to have
been less well represented in the rural landscape and show a decrease over
time. The economic might of the Dublin religious houses is well assessed and
their links to the countryside are clearly delineated, showing the pathways for
tithed produce from the fields to the tables and storehouses of the Abbots. To
put this in context, during this period the Dublin diocese was the richest on
the island and the majority of that wealth was derived from farming and the
exploitation of the natural resources of the region. The English Pale is
comprehensively examined in Chapter 8 and effectively combines both historical
sources and the little available archaeological research. They place its
construction within the broader canvas of other defensive boundaries, including
Offa’s Dyke, Hadrian’s Wall and the Black Pig’s Dyke. They stress the
over-abundance of studies of the Pale boundary in terms of ‘a concept and a
state of mind, rather than as a physical entity’. While recognising that the
project was never completed, they argue that perhaps more had been constructed
than previously realised, though much may have been lost through intensive
agricultural exploitation of the area. The authors also stress the fact that the
Pale earthwork was only one portion of the defensive mechanism, and cannot be
considered in isolation from the numerous towerhouses and church towers along
its length. Other points of note are the reuse of existing portions of double
ditches and defensible natural features. The Pale earthwork, as a defensive
bulwark against the Irish, was eventually a failure, though it does appear to
have functioned successfully for some time. The authors argue that there are
still many questions to be answered in terms of the mental and political
origins of the Pale defenses – confident assertion of ‘Englishness’ or
resignation at the contraction of a colony?

Part
III deals with the Exploitation of Resources, and Chapter 9 provides a detailed
examination of agriculture. During the period under investigation, the majority
of land outside the city was in under some form of agricultural exploitation,
be it arable, pasture or meadow. While arable farming was, generally, the most
important form, there were large regional variations. Analysis of the surviving
textual evidence indicates that arable was of most importance in the north of
the study area, while pasture was the dominant form in the south and
south-west. While some of this patterning was a direct consequence of
environmental factors, it also appears to have been moulded by the requirements
of the city. Arable land was generally sown with grain, predominantly wheat,
oats, barley, and rye, along with various legumes. Of these, wheat and oats
dominated on the manorial demesnes, frequently to the exclusion of all other
crops. Alternately, the smaller farmers are shown to have grown a wider mix of
crops. Both archaeobotanical and historical evidence indicate that growing rye
was a minority interest in the region. The available evidence (both
archaeological and historical) also indicates that weeding and manuring were
frequently used to increase yields. Oxen are shown to have been the chief
draught animal used for ploughing in the early 13th century, though
mixed teams of oxen and horses were also used. By the late 15th
century this situation had evolved to the point where horses were the dominant
ploughing beasts. In terms of meat sources, cattle predominated, though both
sheep and pigs were important commodities on farms of all sizes. Goats appear
to have been raised only by the lower members of society and were particularly
popular in the highlands of south Dublin. Rabbit warrens were introduced in the
late 13th century, both to provide meat for an individual lordly
family and as commercial enterprises in their own right. Around the same time
dovecots were introduced on the larger manorial farms and, by the 15th
century, had spread to smaller farming enterprises. The authors identify one of
the problems with the surviving sources is the fact that it mostly relates to
the large-scale ecclesiastical and secular holdings, while information on the
lives of peasants and the lower end of society is sparse. The sources are also
mostly concentrated in the period around the 13th and early 14th
centuries, making it difficult to provide indications as to how the situation
changed over time. In examining Horticulture (Chapter 10) the evidence suggests
that many gardens existed, but it appears to have been on a small-scale footing,
as opposed to any large commercial venture. One of the contributing factors to
this lack of success may have been that all but exotic, imported fruit was not
particularly highly valued, making it difficult to eke out a profit. The
majority of gardens, both rural and urban, were intended to supply the
individual family or religious institution. To both rich and poor, these
horticultural resources provided valuable additional nutrients and variety in
their diets. In Woods and Woodlands (Chapter 11) the authors identify timber as
among the most important resources for Dublin, requiring a constant supply
sourced from the immediate hinterland.
Timber was required for everything from the construction of houses and boats to
waterfront revetments and the most commonly used fuel source. Even though
construction techniques moved from post-and-wattle in the Viking city to,
generally, stone built by the 13th century, vast quantities of wood
were still required for roofs, floors and scaffolding. This evolution in
building methods also brought a change in the types of wood used; moving from
ash in the earlier period to a greater reliance on oak. Interestingly, research
indicates that local supplies of timber remained viable until the 13th
century, but by the following century more distant forests were being exploited.
By this later date it appears that supplies were, at least occasionally, being
imported from County Antrim. This wholesale deforestation means that most of
the Dublin hinterland would have largely been open countryside during the
medieval period. Most of the surviving forest land was vested in the Crown and
was preserved for hunting. Other Natural Resources are the concern of Chapter
12. Peat bogs are (along with gorse) assessed as an important, if minor, source
of fuel. However, this level of peat exploitation led to the exhaustion of some
reserves by the 14th century, though some of this does appear to
have been as a direct result of the pressure to free up more land for
agricultural purposes. Building stone and roofing slate were usually quarried
locally, though if sourced from greater distances it is likely to have been
transported by river or along the coast. An examination of the available Water
Resources (Chapter 13) indicates the both historical and archaeological sources
agree on the importance of fish in the diets of the city dwellers, though its
availability in the countryside is not fully understood. The sourcing,
marketing and retail of both marine fish and shellfish are revealed as an
efficient, sophisticated system. Fewer types of freshwater fish were available,
with salmon and eel predominating in the records. While the evidence supports
extensive foreshore exploitation, actual examples of the methods, structures
and equipment is exceedingly rare. It is also posited that a preoccupation with
safety sprung up during the 16th and 17th centuries in
response to the privations caused by increased costal piracy by the native
Irish. Responses to these new threats included the construction of a fortified
harbour at Skerries and a wave of new castles.

Many
of these natural resources had to be processed and marketed before they were
ready for sale in the city. It is these means of Processing and Distribution
that are the subject of Part IV. Chapter 14 examines the Processing of Cereal
Products and reports that the majority of the grain produced in the region was
dried in keyhole-shaped kilns and, usually, ground with water-powered mills.
Milling in the region peaked in the period c.1285-1315,
and while it remained an expensive venture to initialise and maintain, it was
always a profitable occupation. During this brief high-point, the Dublin region
was so noted for the quality of its milling that grain was exported from
Scotland to be processed in the region. However, both the archaeological and
documentary evidence suggests that milling entered a serious decline from the
middle of the 14th century, from which it does not appear to have
recovered. While grain was primarily used for baking bread, it was used
extensively for brewing. The authors note that the scale of brewing declined
through the 14th and 15th centuries. This is seen,
partially, as a response to falling production, but also as a response to the
increase in available clean drinking water. The Processing of Animal Products
(Chapter 15) indicates that while dairy products must have been of significance
in the lives of Dublin city folk, there is little evidence of their preparation
and sale. Although Irish butter appears to have been highly regarded, the same
cannot be said for locally produced wool, which was deemed to be of low
quality. Nonetheless, it was in high demand among the cloth-manufacturers of
Flanders. Similarly, Irish hides were exported to the continent. The authors
draw a distinction between cereal processing, which was generally carried out
at manorial centres, and the processing of animal products. The latter was
generally on a smaller scale and combined with other occupations, carried out
by small holding farmers. Chapter 16 examines The Importation and Processing of
Natural Resources. The authors demonstrate that while some iron was mined
locally, the majority was imported from England, Brittany and Spain. Analysis
of slag recovered from excavations indicates that smelting technology improved
over the centuries. Other metals, such as lead, silver, copper, and tin were
worked within the city, but the raw materials all appear to have been imported.
At the time of the Anglo-Norman arrival, the majority of pottery appears to
have been imported, though local production centres soon emerged. The most
common type found on excavations outside the city is Leinster Cooking Ware, and
although recovered from more than 75 sites in the region, a definitive kiln
site has yet to be identified. Within the city the ‘Dublin-type wares’
predominated during the late 12th to 14th centuries.
Imported pottery from England, France, and The Low Countries is etc. are frequent finds on excavations
in the city. The majority of the English pottery from the 12th and
13th centuries originated from Bristol, paralleling the documentary
evidence for strong links between the two cities at this time. Small quantities
of Leinster Cooking Ware have been found in the city, while similarly small amounts
of ‘Dublin-type wares’ and imported pottery are found on rural sites. There
appears to be no well-defined relationship between the wealth of a rural site
and the presence of imported pottery. The authors state that, while wealth is a
factor, proximity to a seaport was at least as important in acquiring exotic
pottery types. Like the pottery, earthenware floor tiles were initially
imported, but soon produced locally. Distribution and Provisioning (Chapter 17)
explores the movement of these commodities around the region. The authors
demonstrate that the provisioning relationship between countryside and city was
a multi-faceted one. For example, the ecclesiastical estates appear to have
been largely immune from market forces, and concentrated on their city-based
houses. For the rest of the city dwellers, acquiring affordable and reliable
sources of provisioning was of the utmost importance, though occasionally
precarious. While the status of the city as a military mustering point ensured
the development of efficient transport and marketing organisations, the populace
frequently resented any actions by the governors that might disrupt their
supplies. In general terms, Dublin city appears to have been well provisioned
from its hinterland. Interestingly, the physical limits of this hinterland are
explored in terms of the practical limits of how far produce could be
transported in a single day, allowing the farmer to return home at night, or
with a single overnight stay in the city. An effective limit of 30km is
proposed and appears reasonable. The structure of the hinterland is also
revealed in terms of the northern portion being chiefly involved in grain
production, while meat, dairy produce and wood was sourced to the south of the
city. While this may have been partially the result of determined spatial organisation,
environmental factors were of equal, if not greater, importance. Part V is
contains only a brief (considering the depth of what has gone before) Conclusions
(Chapter 18), eloquently drawing together the main findings and themes of the
volume. The unique position of the region, as the only significant urban area
on the island, is highlighted. The authors look forward to comparing this area
with other parts of the island, once sufficient regional studies have been
completed. As a template for further research, it is comprehensive and has much
to recommend it as a research model for other areas. Finally, the authors state
that the available data from both the archaeological and documentary evidence
is far from exhausted, and that much research may yet be profitably carried out
on this region.

I am
loathe to describe the work as ‘perfect’ as I am sure that some deficiencies
must exist within the text, but I have yet to find them. I would particularly like
to praise the clarity and simplicity of the writing style, as the authors have been
able to convey difficult concepts succinctly and eloquently for both an
academic and general audience. The illustrations are well chosen and the combination
of excellent photography, historic imagery and archaeological field drawings
add much to the impressive text. The single most ubiquitous image is (understandably)
that of the regional distribution map. It is a minor point, but one worth
expressing, that the use of a single style of map style repeatedly overlaid
with different information is a great aid to the overall clarity. My only
criticism would be that the inclusion of the major watercourses would have been
an additional aid to that clarity. Many reviews of this type conclude with the
assertion that the volume under discussion will be the standard for a
generation, and unlikely to be superseded anytime soon. While I wish I could
avoid using such epithets, tarnished from overuse, I simply cannot believe that
this work on the Dublin region will be surpassed in the next number of decades.
However, I do hope that it serves as an inspiration for other researchers (and,
perhaps, The Discovery Programme) to apply these techniques to other cities and
their hinterlands. Murphy and Potterton have, with the support of The Discovery
Programme, produced a volume that is both beautiful and informative. The breadth
and depth of their research is astonishing and while it represents ‘only’ a
desktop survey, it adds materially to our knowledge. I would commend it,
wholeheartedly, to both the academic communities and the interested reader
alike.

Since
the arrival of the NRA Scheme Monographs in 2007 with Monumental Beginnings: the archaeology of the N4 Sligo Inner Relief Road the series has established itself as a benchmark in
high quality academic publishing. Of Troughs and Tuyères: The archaeology of the N5 Charlestown Bypass is the sixth instalment in the
series and continues this high standard of excavation reporting and
dissemination. In the preface, R. M. Cleary contrasts the traditional focus of
archaeological excavation on monuments with the opportunity to examine the,
apparently, mundane landscapes revealed through large-scale, linear road
projects. Indeed, the route was specifically selected to avoid all known
archaeological sites. She argues that such schemes have forced us to revise
much or our understanding of ‘past societies in a local and regional setting’.
I would disagree only in that I see the significance of these projects (and
their resulting publications) as having an island-wide significance, with the
potential to revolutionise every aspect and period of Irish archaeology.

The
volume presents a synthesis of the results of over forty excavations in eastern
Mayo and a small portion of western Roscommon, covering approximately six millennia
of human activity across the landscape. Chapter 1 (Kerrigan & Gillespie
with MacDonagh) presents an introduction to the scheme, placing it in both
planning and archaeological contexts. Brief, but informative, sections deal
with the geography, geology, soils, and drainage of the area. This is followed
by a wide ranging review of the general landscape character from the Mesolithic
to 19th century Charlestown. Coinciding with my personal research interests, I am gratified to see a section explaining (mostly) the problems
inherent in the use of radiocarbon data and the difficulties in selecting
suitable samples for investigation. In what I see as a particularly brave
stance, the authors highlight one spurious date from a cremation burial at
Lowpark that produced Bronze Age pottery, but dated to the Neolithic (4840±50BP, Beta-23161).
In such instances it would be all too easy to hide this anomalous date deep
within the text and conveniently dismiss it. Placing it here within the
introduction to the project speaks, to me at least, of a commitment to address
all aspects of the results, not just the ones that neatly fit the other evidence.
I have previously argued for the improved reporting of both radiocarbon dates
and their associated meta data, and I applaud the note that the Beta Analytic
dates were calibrated using the IntCal04 curve, albeit with the simplified Talma & Vogel (1993) system – the latest versions of Calib or OxCal are
definitely to be preferred. Similarly, the dates from Groningen are noted as
having been calibrated using IntCal04, but there is no indication of which
computer program was employed. It is a minor point, but it should be remembered
that different computer programs, even using the same version of the
calibration curve, may give different results. Thus, for complete inter-date
comparability it is strongly advised that the same curve and programme be used
across the range of returned dates and that these choices be made
explicit within the text.

Chapter 2 (Gillespie) reports on the
Neolithic excavations at Sonnagh II, Ballyglass West I, and Cashelduff I. Of
these, the most interesting (and contentious) is undoubtedly the Early
Neolithic sub-circular structures at Sonnagh II. We are long-used to
rectangular houses of the Early Neolithic period and such an early sub-circular
feature is clearly anomalous (5275±35BP, GrA-35591). Indeed, the author
struggles to find appropriate parallels and falls back on structural
similarities with the Curraghatoor 3 structure in Co. Tipperary. Though that
particular structure it is not directly dated, he notes that the Curraghatoor
complex is significantly later than the Sonnagh evidence, dating to the Late
Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Considering the implications for our
understanding of the Early Neolithic, one can only regret that further samples
were not directly dated. It may well be that the gravelly fills did not
provided sufficient charcoal for further dates, but we can only hope that, now
the potential importance of this site has been recognised, efforts will be made
to reinvestigate and re-date any surviving samples. Chapter 3 (Kerrigan &
Gillespie) tackles the large volume of Bronze Age burnt mounds and burnt
spreads discovered in the course of the project. It is impossible to pick out
as many interesting features of the excavated examples as I would like, but the
recovery of a tin bead from Sonnagh V (perhaps imported from Switzerland) is a
major addition to our understanding of these, generally artefact-free, sites.
As the author points out, it speaks of long-distance trade and contacts,
placing the Irish evidence within a truly international context. While the
illustration throughout the volume is superb, I would like to particularly note
it here as the judicious use of colour and shading to define the surviving
wooden elements within troughs is excellent and strongly contributes to the quality
of the work as a whole.

Chapter 4 (Gillespie) is, by a considerable
margin, the longest in the book, weighing in at 163 pages. It deals with the
reporting of the previously unknown archaeological complex at Lowpark. The
earliest evidence from the complex dates to the Early Neolithic, with
additional activity in the Bronze Age. However, the major phases of activity
centred on the Iron Age and Early Christian periods, when the site was used as
an iron working area, complete with semi-sunken workshops, anvils and a large
volume (c.1.5 tonnes) of iron slag. The Neolithic activity included a
number of pits and a particularly rare Grooved Ware timber circle. During the
Early Christian period the site was enclosed, not by the usual rath ditches,
but by timber palisades made from split planks. Settlement here appears to have
been of a considerable duration as there was evidence of repair to the
defenses. Amongst all the spectacular finds of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years, now
finding their way into print, it is easy to lose sight of the importance and
rarity of individual sites. Lowpark is certainly unique within the Irish
archaeological record and is the chief basis for my contention of island-wide
significance for this volume. The domestic finds from the site, including
rotary querns, lignite bracelet fragments, a bone pin, and beads are all well
attested on other sites across the island. However, the recovery of the gold
filigree panel, with its close parallels to Lagore, Co. Meath suggests
high-status associations. Another important result of the Lowpark excavation
has been the recovery of high-quality samples for dating from the souterrains.
As Clinton (2001) has shown, souterrains are notoriously difficult to date.
Thus, firm evidence of construction in the 6th and 7th
centuries is much welcomed.

Chapter 5 (Gillespie) describes the
excavation of a bivallate rath and souterrain at Cloonaghboy. Here too dating
evidence was recovered from postholes associated with the souterrain, placing
construction in the period from the
early 7th to the mid 9th centuries. Unfortunately, severe
truncation of the interior had erased any trace of the structures that once
stood here. Chapter 6 (Kerrigan & Gillespie) begins with an examination of
the charcoal production pits, the majority of which dated to the 11th
to 17th centuries. The chapter continues with descriptions of a
small number of vernacular houses, along with some miscellaneous sites
encountered on the project: a set of three stepping stones across a stream
(Ballyglass West) and a wood-lined drain (Cloonaghboy). Appendix A lists the 81
radiocarbon dates commissioned by the project and is a significant addition to
the Irish corpus. An accompanying CD also lists the radiocarbon dates,
along with pottery reports from Lowpark (Appendix 2), the lithics (Appendix 3),
the gold filigree panel (Appendix 4 - an
edited version also appears as ‘side bar’ within the main text), Lignite
artefacts from Lowpark (Appendix 5), ferrous and non-ferrous artefacts and
stone artefacts from (Appendices 6a-c), the Sonnagh V tin bead (Appendix 7),
metallurgical residue (Appendix 8), faunal remains (Appendix 9), burnt remains
(Appendix 10), wood and charcoal (Appendix 11), macrofossil plant and insect
remains (Appendices 12 & 13), along with geography and geology (Appendix
14). A separate folder also provides the original final excavation reports from
the sites as PDFs. If I am to be honest, I am rather ambivalent about the
relegation of specialist reports to CDs or similar media. It is all well and
good now while the technology is still current, but inevitably that technology
will move on and these valuable appendices will be lost to all researchers
without access to ‘legacy systems’. Even within recent memory we have seen the
fashion for microfiche sheets come and go, leaving us with volumes of data so
close, but just beyond reach. On the other hand, it is not as though these
appendices could easily have been incorporated into the volume for a relatively
minor outlay in costs – they represent, by my count, an additional 482 pages.
Even leaving aside the additional 2130 pages of PDFs of the original excavation
reports, that is a vast amount of data. I do not raise this as an issue solely
with this volume, but as a long term archival issue that must yet be addressed.

If I had to identify any faults in the
publication, it is the continued use of ‘fulacht fiadh’ over the preferable
terms ‘burnt mounds’ and ‘burnt spreads’. It feels churlish to speak about this again, but I do believe that we must move away from this inaccurate and
out-dated term. On the other hand, my personal preference is for the out-dated
term ‘Early Christian’ over the more commonly used ‘Early Medieval’. In this
context, my complaints may be viewed as personal preferences that in no way impinge
on the quality of scholarship or value of the data presented here. Like the
other titles in the NRA Scheme Monograph series, this is an impressive volume
that materially adds to the collective knowledge of our past: both for the
Charlestown area and the island as a whole.

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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

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The Helen Roe
Lecture Theatre at the Dublin headquarters of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland was the setting for the
presentation of nine papers detailing the advances in our knowledge brought
about by the INSTAR project. The one-day conference was jointly hosted by the
Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and The Heritage Council. Ian
Doyle, Head of Conservation at The Heritage Council, chaired the first session
and gave the delegates a warm welcome and provided some remarks concerning the
means by which the INSTAR Programme was founded. The first lecture of the
morning was Making Christian Landscapes presented by Dr. Tomás Ó Carragáin
(UCC). In a theme that would emerge as recurrent motif of the conference, he
emphasised the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the INSTAR
programme, bringing together academia and commercial consultancies;
archaeologists and historians and the interaction between Irish researchers and
their internationally-based colleagues. As a core illustration of this point,
the ‘Making Christian Landscapes’ project was defined in terms of not just a
comparison of the Irish evidence against the contemporary situation in England,
but as part of the broader canvas of Atlantic Europe. The primary tools
developed for the project were a database and a GIS application. The main
thrust of the project was the use of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC)
to attempt to define the extents of monastic estates. He made the point that
this approach of combining landscape analysis with an assessment of the
available historical and archaeological data was fraught with difficulties, but
had made some notable successes. In describing the choice of case studies for
the project, Ó Carragáin explained that some areas were deliberately chosen as
they were known to contain excavated examples of the relatively newly identified
‘Cemetery Settlement’ (or ‘Settlement Cemeteries’, if you prefer) site type.
These, he reminded the audience, were unknown to Irish archaeology only 10 to
15 years ago, yet as a direct consequence of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom in
construction are now well recognised as an integral part of the Early Christian
landscape. Such sites were roughly 50m in diameter and contained less than
200-300 burials. The relatively low number of graves is taken to suggest that
they represent the burial grounds of single kin groups. On the other hand, some
sites like Parknahown 5, Co. Laois, contained up to 600 burials. He explained
that this association of the living with the dead may be interpreted as a
breakdown of Classical taboos that required separation between the two spheres.
Excavation has shown that some of these sites are relatively short-lived, but
that some survived in use until the 12th century. This directly opposes the
long-held view that non-ecclesiastical burial had declined by the 7th century,
at the latest. Ó Carragáin explained that these data raise fundamental questions
about our understanding of the Early Christian period: does this represent a
resistance to Church authority? Is it evidence for the survival of paganism?
His answer was an emphatic: No. Some of these sites, such as Faughart, Co.
Louth or Camlin, Co. Tipperary, are known to have been situated on
ecclesiastical estates and are unlikely to have been anti-clerical in outlook.
Instead he proposes a slightly altered version of the traditional model, where
by 800 AD the majority of burials were on church land, but that there was no
defined church aversion to non-ecclesiastical burials either.

Ian Doyle (centre) chairs discussion at the end of Session I

He continued with
a detailed examination of the Corca
Duibne case study, though this did not actually have any known Cemetery
Settlements. Here the ecclesiastical focus was the monastic foundation at Inis
Úasal in Lough Currane, Co. Kerry. Traditionally, the foundation of the
monastery is ascribed to St Finan/Fíonán. The island is known to have been the
central node of a large ecclesiastical estate. The application of the HLC
process, combining historical and placename evidence (e.g. the prevalence of the ‘Termon’ element in Townland names),
along with archaeological survey data (such as the presence of a barrow and
various cross-slabs along boundary lines) allowed a relatively secure
delineation of the extents of the monastic lands. He notes that this estate
would have included a number of ‘secular’ raths and cashels. These lay tenants
would have lived somewhat more ecclesiastical or quasi-ecclesiastical lives
than the rest of the population, with days set aside for fasting and sexual
abstinence. Looking at the broader landscape picture, Ó Carragáin and his
colleagues have found evidence for the establishment of family or kin group
churches. Comparison of this data with the contemporary situation in
Anglo-Saxon England suggests that Ireland had a much heavier density of
churches (and possibly more than anywhere else in Western Europe). The
implication is that, in Ireland, there was a greater range of both nobles and
non-nobles who felt entitled to found churches.

In conclusion, he
argued that the progress made by the project only underscored the importance of
‘interdisciplinarity’ where historians can learn to ask archaeological
questions and vice-versa. He also
argued that the HLC approach was not simply a powerful research tool, but had a
wider impact in landscape management. In particular he praised the format of
the INSTAR funding in the way that it facilitated research and simultaneously
broadened the scope of that research.

Dr. Graeme Warren’s
(UCD) presentation on the Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscapes of North Mayo was introduced by Prof. Seamus Caulfield who wished to provide
what he termed ‘the prehistory of the project’. Caulfield described how the
early work on the Céide field systems during the 70s and 80s was all unfunded,
and depended on voluntary contributions by his students. He described the
situation of that time where fieldwork of the kind he was undertaking could not
find funding, though actual excavations could. He praised INSTAR for taking a
broader view and funding both. He also commented on the past difficulties in
communicating his results to other academics, and praised the current emphasis
on a broad engagement with both academic and non-specialist audiences. Caulfield’s
general theme was that the Céide Fields project prefigured many of the positive
developments now championed by INSTAR. He also presented cogent arguments to
the effect that Céide was the source and partial inspiration for both the
‘Riverdance’ phenomenon and The Discovery Programme.

When Warren was
allowed to take to the lectern, he introduced the Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscapes of North Mayo project and the
place of the Céide system within the broader landscape setting. One of the main
objects of the current research was to produce both academic and popular
syntheses of the large series of excavations undertake in the area over the
years, the majority of which have not been published in detail. A large portion
of the project has been concerned with integrating all the information from the
excavations, including specialist reports, stratigraphic data, radiocarbon
dates etc. into both publishable
report form and a dedicated GIS system. The GIS system has incorporated both
old and new data, including a new and more accurate survey of the locations of
field walls. The new system boasts a minimum level of accuracy of ±15m for any
individual wall, with many having been much more accurately surveyed. As both a
visualization and quantification resource, the GIS model is capable of giving a
broad landscape context to the fact that 84.5km of theses walls survive across
almost 40km of North Mayo. Some 116 excavation cuttings (representing c. 4,000 m2) have been
undertaken across this landscape, including excavations by Ó Nualláin & de
Valera, Caulfield and more recent investigations. This combination of so much
information from so many sources into a single GIS model is also capable of
utilisation as a landscape management tool. One example given was of being able
to chart the destruction of some areas of Neolithic walling under forestry over
the last 20 years.

Warren made the
point that the coaxial field system plan of the Céide is deeply embedded within
archaeological discourse and that the GIS system allowed us to challenge these
familiar ways of looking at this landscape. To this end he demonstrated a
number of computer generated visualisations of the landscape rotating in three
dimensions. These allowed him to show how the ‘classic’ Céide system is but a
part of a much larger landscape and part of a range of field wall patterns. An
interrogation of the data shows that the walls now survive only in areas of peatland,
while the megalithic tombs survive in both peat and dryland locations. The
implication being that the walls, too, once covered the majority of the
landscape, but have been destroyed. Another aspect of the project had been to
reassess the radiocarbon determinations already available for the various
excavated sites. One aspect of this is the agreement with other research that
dates provided by the Smithsonian radiocarbon laboratory, undertaken in the
1970s, are too young. Similarly, dates on charcoal from the UCD laboratory may
be too early, though dates done directly on tree samples are considered to be
accurate [edit: I got this slightly wrong - see response from Dr. Graeme Warren in the comments for corrections]. One interesting anomaly has been the realisation that a large number
of radiocarbon dates on birch are dated to the exact point in time that the
available pollen diagrams suggest there was a massive decrease in birch growth.
Overall, Warren argued that this approach shows the value of the GIS model in
assessing different levels of sale and integrating different strands of
research.

Dr. Stephen Davis
(UCD) spoke on the topic of An Integrated, Comprehensive GIS Model of Landscape Evolution & Landuse History in the River Boyne Valley. In
introducing the project, he first noted that the somewhat unwieldy title had since
been shortened to the much more manageable The
Boyne Valley Landscape Project. He described that Phase I of the project
had concentrated on building the GIS model and integrating the available data
sources, including OSI mapping, SMR, excavations, known lithic scatters and
LiDAR data. Phase II included adding palaeoenvironmental data and commissioning
new coring sites for pollen analysis. He noted that although one particular
core did not produce any archaeologically-relevant data, it did produce good
data on the Late Glacial period and is currently being prepared for
publication. Other applications utilised during this phase included Terrestrial
LiDAR and geophysical survey. In Phase III, due to budget considerations, the
focus was chiefly archaeological. Research concentrated on overlying GIS and
LiDAR data, targeted geophysical survey and viewshed analysis. The analysis of
the LiDAR data has added 130 new discoveries, and the identification of new
sites is still continuing! For example, near Site A, at Brú na Bóinne an
enclosure (designated LP1) has been discovered, measuring c. 120m in diameter. Targeted geophysics added further detail to
the picture, by revealing a second site inside the first. This second site
appears to be a circular arrangement of pits or postholes – perhaps a timber circle?
At Site B an enclosure (Site B1) has been identified, surrounding the site.
Near Site P a further low-profile site (LP2) has been recognised. Here too,
targeted geophysics has revealed incredible detail of a further enclosure. At
both Dowth and Ballyboy, evaluation of the LiDAR data has revealed what are
best described as ‘hollow ways’. Without excavation there is no direct proof of
date or function, but Davis stuck his neck out and suggested a prehistoric date
and a ritual use.

With regard to
the visualisations afforded by the GIS models, Davis spoke about the use of
Local Relief Models and their part in the discovery of a large rectangular
enclosure near Site P and a second enclosure at Site A. The application of
Cumulative Viewshed Analysis of tomb visibility produced a number of
interesting results, including the ‘hidden’ nature of Dowth henge. Essentially,
the method has shown that the henge is largely invisible on the landscape – the
other tombs cannot be seen from it, nor can the henge be seen from the tombs.
Site P was also identified as the only site in the Boyne Valley where all three
of the major tombs (Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth) are simultaneously visible.
Such snippets alone should provide sufficient fodder for discussion, debate and
assorted theorising for some time to come.

Davis was keen to
promoted the ‘spin-offs’ from this project, all of which would have been
impossible without the initial impetus from INSTAR. These include the Meath
Embanked Enclosures Project and the Hill of Ward Archaeological Project. In the
latter case LEADER funding has been applied for to help sustain a local
archaeological initiate to produce a brochure/guide to the area. The project has
also made application to WorldView-2 for access to their 8 band satellite
imagery. This resource provides satellite imagery in various light waves. When
combined with LiDAR, the approach is already producing what Davis hopefully
terms ‘subtle anomalies’.

Coffee break in the convivial surroundings of the RSAI garden

After a coffee
break, Session II resumed, under the chairmanship of Mr. Brian Duffy, Chief
Archaeologist, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The first topic
was Early Medieval Archaeology Project I&II. Part I was delivered by Dr.
Aidan O’Sullivan (UCD) who, like many other speakers, emphasised the role of
the project as a partnership between the commercial archaeological sector and
the academic world - with tangible benefits for both. In his introduction to
the project, he described the Early Christian period as a source of imagery for
Cultural Nationalists of the 19th and 20th centuries
and, as such it maintained a significant grip on the national psyche. He also
saw the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years, and the vast quantities of raw data they
produced, as a boon to the study of the period. Alternately, he conceded that
these vast amounts of data, and the attendant publication crisis, were also
deeply problematic. It was within this framework that the objectives of EMAP
were set out: collation, synthesis and publication. There was also a strong
desire to create useful resources. To this end data, in the form of PDF
reports, was made available via the internet, with the intention of feeding
back into both academic scholarship and the commercial world. One interesting
aspect of the research was their ability to demonstrate that that the volume of
data was not insurmountable and, with judicious selection, could be tackled and
synthesised. O’Sullivan’s final point was the heavy domination of settlement
evidence in the numbers of sites excavated.

This theme was
taken up by Finbar McCormick (QUB) in the second part of the presentation. He
spoke on the organisation of Early Christian settlement in terms of social,
ideological, and economic factors. In the first instance, he was keen to point
out that the old model of ‘monks in monasteries and everyone else in raths’ is over.
Interrogation of radiocarbon determinations has shown that by the mid-600s rath
construction had peaked (with the exception of the Ulster raised raths). He
described an apparent secondary peak during the period 700-800 AD as
illusionary and a product of the shape of the calibration curve. It also
appears as though bi-vallate and multi-vallate raths were the earliest in the
sequence, predating ‘common’ univallate enclosures. However, the picture
appears clouded by what he describes as ‘the Clogher factor’ where the early
hillfort at Clogher, Co. Tyrone, was replaced by a high status rath. Cashels
are also revealed as a ‘post rath phenomenon’. The relatively newly recognised
‘Settlement Cemeteries’ are also revealed as contemporary with rath
construction. For McCormick this raises the question of, if they are
contemporary, was there some differentiation in status or function? However, an
analysis of the recovered finds suggests great similarities between raths and
the Cemetery Settlements, suggesting a similar social standing between the two
types. On the other hand, McCormick and his colleagues have made a clear
differentiation between two types of Early Christian site uncovered in
excavation: ones with associated field systems and those without. He sees that
raths without attached fields may be associated with stock-raising. Based on
the surviving corpus of Early Irish texts, this may be taken as an indicator of
higher status dwellings, as opposed to the lower position of those engaged in
arable farming. It is these ‘complicated’ raths with multiple ditches and field
boundaries that are seen as the centres of working estates, where the chief
economic activities were centred on arable farming. McCormick raised the
intriguing, but long-dismissed, idea that some of these large complexes could
represent ‘proto villages’. At Ratoath, Co. Meath, an analysis of the
distribution of discarded animal bone has led to the reinterpretation of
‘paddocks’ as potential house enclosures. He reiterated the need to remember
that substantial Early Christian houses, like those found at Deer Park Farms,
only survived because of the waterlogged conditions and in regular dryland
sites would only have survived as a collection of stakeholes, the postholes of
the door jambs and, perhaps, the drip-trench to convey water away from the
thatched roof. A recent illustration of this is the Early Christian rath and house
the author excavated at Carryduff, Co. Down, where the central house was
defined by the slightest of evidence [video]. He also argued that sites such as
Knowth, Co. Meath, and Ballywee, Co. Antrim, can be considered as genuine
examples of Early Christian nucleated settlement, with 10 and eight houses
respectively. This brough McCormick back to the often-contested assertion by
Harold Mytum (1991) that raths were the preserve of the nobility and that there
may well be some merit in it.

Examining the
dates for mills, McCormick notes that very few predate c. 800 AD. He sees this as evidence that major changes in the
economy were taking place around this time. Specifically, he sees a move from a
subsistence economy to one much more commercial in scale. In this way, small
quern stones, used by individual families, were replaced with larger,
industrial-scale mills. This time frame appears to correlate with a concurrent
decrease in the evidence for cereal drying kilns. Again, this is seen in terms
of moving away from individual families, each drying their own small volume of
grain, to bringing it to larger-scale commercial centres for drying and
processing. The later kilns would have been large, above-ground structures,
more susceptible to erasure from the archaeological record. However, he did
suggest a possible candidate surviving at Nendrum, Co. Down, though this has
yet to be investigated. To my mind this raises the intriguing possibility that
we are seeing evidence of the Church, having cemented its grip on the conscience
of the people, consolidating its position by seizing the means of production
and processing. In any event, all the available dates cease around 1000 AD and
we are currently left only with questions. If they did abandon the raths where
did the people go? Did they move to dispersed settlements? Did they move to
towns? There is certainly huge scope for future research in this field.

The first portion
of the paper: Mapping Death: People, Boundaries & Territories in Ireland 1st to 8th Centuries AD was presented by Dr. Edel Bhreathnach
(UCD). Like any of the speakers before her, she underlined the
interdisciplinary nature of the project, bringing archaeologists (both
commercial and academic) together with historians, linguists, and a whole host
of scientific applications; including DNA and isotopic analyses, along with
radiocarbon dating and osteoarchaeology. Bhreathnach was keen to place the
Irish evidence, not solely in a local, Early Christian frame, but in the wider
context of Ireland as a frontier zone of the Roman Empire in the Late Antique Period. She spoke of how the Mapping Death project concentrated on building a
complete cultural and archaeological history of each site. While their online,
searchable database contains ‘only’ 160 sites, she was quick to point out that
these are sites researched in depth, providing a true multi-disciplinary
analysis of Irish society in the period from 300 – 700 AD. Analysis of this
body of data represents a huge advance in our understanding of Early Christian
death and burial. Some of the questions this data has been applied to include
how burial rites and cemeteries reflect practiced religion, ritual acts and
belief systems. Another avenue of the dead has been the exploration of the
‘Landscape of the Dead’, looking at the relationships that existed between
contemporary society and the ancestors, and how the living negotiated the
complexities of existence with and among the dead. The data also throws light
on the conversion process in Ireland, showing evidence of a lengthy endeavour
stretching from 400-700 AD. Bhreathnach was also keen to stress the external
influences on Ireland, especially in the sense that Christianity came not on
its own, but as part of a package to this frontier zone of the Roman Empire.
The additional items in that package took the form of a new language (Latin),
texts and thoughts. In the latter instance, these new thoughts become manifest
in terms of how the associations between the living and the dead changed over
time. In this way the evolution of burial rites and cemetery structuring
reflected the structures within contemporary society.

While the terms
‘Settlement Cemeteries’ or ‘Cemetery Settlements’ appear to be gaining
popularity, Bhreathnach would argue for either the term ‘Familial Cemeteries’
or ‘Familial Settlements’, stressing the primacy of the kin groups to whom they
belonged. The information gained from this project is providing detailed
pictures of the health and genetics of the population. However, it is isotopic
analysis that is providing some extraordinary insights. In particular, there is
evidence for population movements, especially of women, from the west of
Ireland to the east, and from the north-east (and possibly Britain) to the
south. This ties in well with early accounts of the mobility of women as they
moved for the purposes of marriage. In the question and answer session
afterwards, Dr. O’Brien spoke about recent isotopic work on E. P. Kelly’s
excavation of a number of skeletons at Bettystown, Co. Meath, discovered in the
1970s [Dr. O'Brien has asked me to note that most of the isotopic/oxygen analysis was undertaken by Dr. Jacqueline Cahill Wilson]. She revealed that one of the burials, deposited in an unusually tight (for
Ireland) crouched position, actually originated either in North Africa, or the
most extreme southerly tip of Spain. Not only did this person get as far as
Meath and die there, the implication must be that he was not alone – at least
one person had accompanied him and was able to ensure that his compatriot was
buried in a manner appropriate to his culture. Addressing future
recommendations she called for Heritage Council backing to secure EU funding to
assist in the integration of the various databases, to move away from the
current ‘patchwork’ of resources. Dr. Elizabeth O’Brien then demonstrated the ‘Mapping Death’ database, explaining that it was intended as a starting point for future
research, not an end in itself. Her primary example was the entry for
Ardnagross, Co. Westmeath, showing the detailed records the resource contains
and how the data may be effectively mined to extract relevant research data.

The final session
of the day, chaired by Prof. Gabriel Cooney (UCD) was begun by Dr. Barra Ó
Donnabháin (UCC), speaking on The People of Prehistoric Ireland: Healthand Demography. He began by defining the human experience as a synergy
between biological and cultural systems, that we as archaeologists may access it
through the medium of human skeletal remains. Within such a paradigm he argued
that the act of burial was a tangible link between these biological and
cultural experiences. One point that I found particularly incisive was his
contention that actual skeletons had made little impact on Irish prehistory, as
discussion is generally limited to mortuary practices. He continued, saying
that where skeletal material is assessed in excavation reports, it is frequently
relegated to an appendix, making little, if any, impact on the body of the
text. Giving the development of the project, he described Phase I, beginning in
2009, with the process of data collection. This process led to the collation of
information on 1100 sites and the commissioning of new radiocarbon dates to
assist in the resolution of chronological issues. Phase II, in 2010, was
concerned with updating the database of sites and establishing two hard copy
libraries of all available osteological reports etc., at QUB and UCC. Since that time the emphasis has been on
providing a synthesis of the osteological data, with publication being the next
anticipated step. At the present time the database holds records on 1651 sites
where human skeletal material was recovered. This ranges from single-line
references in antiquarian reports to modern osteological examinations from the
latest excavations. In all the database lists c. 3000 burials, the majority of which are Bronze Age in date, and
the most usual method of disposal was by cremation. Ó Donnabháin and his
colleagues are currently in the process of mining this data mountain and
attempting to correlate biological data (age, sex etc.), with evidence for mortuary practices and wider issues of
health and demography. A number of new radiocarbon determinations have also
been commissioned to help resolve problematic dates from other excavations. The
example he chose was the different ages from the two cremations in the
segmented cist at Newtonstewart Castle. One cist returned a determination of
3897±39 BP (UB-6783, 2475-2212 cal BC), while the other dated to 3680±38 (UB-6784,
2195-1915 cal BC). Such discrepancies in dating raise questions about the
curation and pre-depositional history of human skeletal material, or perhaps
the longer term access to the cist grave. As an aside, I would mention that
although I was not on site the day the Newtonstewart cist was opened, I was the
digger that found it, hidden in the foundations of a 1960s shop ... while using
a jackhammer! It remains one of my best finds, and while I was glad to see it
published (UJA 64), I’m delighted that it remains the subject of debate and
investigation.

The author (with jackhammer) at Newtonstewart Castle,

shortly before the discovery of the segmented cist

Ó Donnabháin also
explained that the format of the database used by the project allow spatial
analysis of the data to examine regional differences in mortuary practises and
population health. He allowed that although there are some issues of
archaeological visibility and recording bias, the approach does appear to be
revealing genuine cultural behaviours in the past. What he termed the ‘nuanced
interrogation of these data’ is already producing results. For example, of the
1726 known individuals, children (or ‘non adults’) are distinctly under
represented (c. 25%). Among the
adults, there is a similar under representation of women. Across the Neolithic
and Bronze Age it appears that age and sex demographics are broadly similar.
During the Neolithic there are relatively low markers for physiological stress,
but there indications of long-term damage to shoulders and backs. This
work-related trauma is taken to suggest that there was a large amount of heavy
lifting and portage in these people’s lives. By the Bronze Age there appears to
have been a diminution in general health, with increased markers for physical
stress. There is also evidence for increases in blunt-force trauma and an
upsurge in tooth decay. Outlining plans for the future, he argued that an
effort should be made to locate the current whereabouts (and curation details)
of the skeletal material. At this time, the location and condition of 80% of
the material in their database is unknown. Though, to put this in context, this
figure does include antiquarian investigations and modern excavations are much
better represented. In his final comments, Ó Donnabháin called for the
standardising of ostearchaeological methodology, recording analysis and
reporting. He also argued that it should be standard practice to publish, not
just the summary results, but the raw data set accumulated during the analysis.
Such a move would allow other researchers to examine and reassess the work in
the future and would be a considerable resource for researchers.

Dr. Ingelise Stuijts
(The Discovery Programme) spoke about WODAN: Developing a wood and charcoal database for Ireland. She began by giving a brief history of the
project and explaining that Phase I began with gauging the desirability of such
a resource within the wood identification community and also assessing how
information was currently stored. The first realisation was that there was no
standardisation across the profession. In terms of storing data, many
individuals and institutions used their own in-house database systems, which
were largely incompatible with each other. She also pointed out that many
researchers stored their data in MS Excel spreadsheets and, while useful, are
not actually databases. Having decided to create a new database the question
arose as to how the data would be shared. The idea that it could be disseminated
on disc to interested parties was considered, but ultimately rejected; owing to
issues of distribution and the difficulty in knowing of the data you are
working with is the latest version. From these bases, the aims of the project
were to create a new database that pursued high standards (recognised both in
Ireland and internationally); accessibility of the data; and built on a secure,
robust technology. The project took the decision to embrace open source ‘cloudcomputing’ to provide a web enabled and web hosted resource. Although not yet
ready for public release, Stuijts described some of the features of the
resource, including ‘MyWODAN’ where personal projects (either research or
commercial) may be hosted, though not ready for full dissemination. There are
also flexible query functionality and the ability to produce auto saturation
curves. This latter function allows the researcher to gauge the number of
individual samples necessary to provide a comprehensive assessment of an
individual site. In its current form the database contains detailed information
on over 500 sites.

Looking to the
future, she argues for agreed standards in wood and charcoal identification,
along with standardised outputs. The project is also working to provide
suitable pro-forma sheets to be used by field archaeologists to assist in the
collection of suitable meta-data on the samples excavated. She would also like
to see stronger links with field archaeologists to allow information to be
referred back to the database from final reports and publications. Finally, she
argued for the use of the database to be linked to the licenses to export and alter
archaeological materials, to ensure the best level of reporting.

Dr. Nicki
Whitehouse (QUB) presented the results of Cultivating Societies: Accessing the Evidence for Agriculture in Neolithic Ireland. She explained that it
was a topic close to her personal research interests in the beginnings of the
Neolithic across the whole of northwestern Europe. However, she felt that there
had been little previous work in linking individual sites to the environmental
data and to the economy – a situation rectified by the INSTAR funding for this
project. As others had previously described, this project wished to create new
paradigms through the maximisation of the data mountain produced through
commercial excavation during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy. In particular, the
project sought to bring a Bayesian approach to questions of chronology, while
bringing both archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data together. The project
commissioned 189 new radiocarbon determinations and collated a further 1433
previously available dates. The project used paired dates in a Bayesian
framework to significantly refine the available chronology. She identified a
problem in the accessing of much of the ‘grey literature’ resource as there is
no central repository for archaeological reports. Nonetheless, she did praise
the ‘huge goodwill’ the project generally received from the archaeological community.
Once the basic data had been collected, the state of the resource was examined.
One result of this process was the identification that half of the relevant
sites are securely dated, while the other half is not. Of the dated material,
Neolithic houses are particularly well represented, while pit complexes are
neither as well dated, nor as regularly selected for radiocarbon dating. In
essence, there has been a concentration on dating the very obvious features.
Not coming as a huge surprise, the project indentified that charcoal dates tend
to be older and that there should be a concerted effort to utilise short-lived
samples. While I agree wholeheartedly, I have argued elsewhere (Chapple 2008a,
156; see also Ashmore 1999) that while such concerns are well recognised within
field archaeology, finding a suitable single entity sample is often difficult
to achieve.

The project also
sought to interrogate the robustness of McSparron’s ‘Neolithic House Horizon’
where the vast majority of well-dated houses cluster at the beginning of the
Neolithic (McSparron 2008). McSparron (using 18 radiocarbon determinations)
sees the dates for these structures as confined to a 100 year (or less) window
at the very beginning of the Neolithic. The project commissioned a further 126
dates on single entity, short-lived materials. The results demonstrate the
robustness of the McSparron model, though the use of Bayesian analysis could
reduce the time span further, to a 40-100 year period. Similar new dates and Bayesian
analysis at Corbally, Co. Kildare, have demonstrated that settlement here may
be broken down into four distinct phases, as opposed to the previous
understanding that all the activity was contemporary. A particular emphasis was
placed by the project on dating the previously under-represented pit complexes.
In all, 37 new dates were commissioned for 10 sites. The results of this show a
general picture of the rectangular house phenomenon being replaced by pit
complexes. While there is a slight degree of overlap between the two forms of
occupation, it appears to be based on the data from a single site. If I
understood her correctly, the site in question is one excavated under my
direction: Site 12 at Oakgrove, Gransha, Co. Londonderry (Chapple 2008b). Here
a date on charcoal came back at 4930±70 (Beta-227762, 3943-3583 cal BC).
Further dates in short-lived, single entity materials were undertaken by the ‘Cultivating
Societies’ project (Schulting & Reimer in Chapple 2008b, Appendix 7),
refining the chronology considerably. At the time I wrote it up for publication
I was unsure as to whether it could realistically be described as a ‘house’ in
the way that that term is usually used. My feeling was that, when the recovered
evidence was taken together, it must represent some form of ‘settlement’, if
not an actual ‘house’. I largely stand by this assertion, but feel that if
there had to be a defined affinity between one group or another, Site 12 should
be categorised among the houses.

Site 12, Oakgrove, Gransha, Co. Londonderry, during excavation

An examination of
recovered weed seeds has also been taken to suggest that during the Neolithic
permanent, manured plots were used. While it seems like a simple observation,
this has radical implications for how we interpret questions of sedentarism and
mobility during this period. Whitehouse was also quick to point out that
charred plant macrofossils are only part of the picture and involve questions
of survival and discovery. To demonstrate this point, she pointed to the
evidence recovered from Clowanstown 1, Co. Meath, where analysis of waterlogged
material demonstrated the continued importance of wild varieties in the Early
Neolithic diet.

In assessing the
available pollen records the project found that although some 400 pollen cores
have been taken over the last 80 to 100 years, only 70 were considered
sufficiently well dated and of use to the needs of the project. One of the
questions being investigated is the evidence or spatial variability in events
such as the Elm Decline and how it is actually associated with the beginnings
of the Irish Neolithic. Another aspect of working with the pollen diagrams is
that not all have sufficient radiocarbon dates (and in the right places). To
circumvent this difficulty, the project made use of ‘Age Depth Modelling’,
where a mathematical model is employed to create ‘virtual’ radiocarbon dates
for any given place on the core. To date over 700 age models have been created
and the elm decline may now be confidently dated to the period 4327-3881 cal BC
– a period of 946 cal years. Within this data there also appears to b evidence
of a geographical lag between the north and the west of the island. However,
Whitehouse admits that more work is needed. There also appears to a correlation
between reforestation in the period 3400-3300 cal BC and the end of the
rectangular house ‘building boom’. She suggests that this may coincide with the
dates for Whittle’s arguments for a rise in the construction of enclosures and
cursus monuments.

The final speaker
of the day was Prof. Przemysław Urbańczyk (Polish Academy of Sciences) who
talked about INSTAR and Archaeological Research Funding Initiatives. For
those of us not familiar with him and his work, he described his background in
Irish Archaeology and his association with INSTAR in particular. In particular
he charted the vicissitudes of funding for the programme and, despite the reduced
investment in the later phases, saw much to recommend. In particular he wished
to stress the achievements of the programme and the results achieved. He argued
for the value of such a programme and compared its existence and success to the
situations in both Norway and his native Poland. He described how in Poland the
National Heritage Institute allocates money to a much larger number of small
projects, versus the small number of INSTAR projects. While he sees that the
Polish system makes ‘more people happy’, the Irish system has returned projects
that have had much more major impacts on our understanding of the subject as a
whole. He also saw that in both Norway and Poland most of the money spent by
the state was spent on the management of the existing resource (curation,
cataloguing etc.) as opposed to
INSTAR, which has made meaningful new leaps forward in our knowledge. There are
no large-scale projects funded through central government in either of these
countries, and he felt that the Irish situation may well be unique. This
uniqueness was expressed not just in terms of the national scale of INSTAR, but
in the bringing together of both academic and private stakeholders. For achieving
these goals, it should be the envy of Europe. While he admitted that the INSTAR
programme has not been prefect, it was his contention that it remained as an
exemplar for others to follow. He also spoke on the importance of not just
seeing Ireland in terms of it relationships with Britain, but as part of a
Europe-wide canvas. This is not simply a plea to ‘big picture’ archaeology, but
a response to the reality that the majority of the funding coming from European
central funds is keen on examining this theme and that projects (however worthy)
that fail to look at the widest picture will not succeed. Practically his final
words to the assembled delegates spoke of the achievements of the INSTAR
programme: “What you have done: this is really great”

As one might
imagine, all the speakers were concerned to demonstrate that the funds
entrusted to them had paid dividends – not ‘merely’ in terms of the exciting
and extraordinary results that had been achieved. In his presentation, Ó
Carragáin explained that the ‘Making Christian Landscapes’ project had employed
two core researchers, supported two PhD students and also resulted in various
publications and conference papers, including the organisation of a dedicated
conference in UCC to be held in 2012. Dr. Graeme Warren’s discussion of the
effects of the ‘Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscapes of North Mayo’ project also
promoted the importance of the employment opportunities created and their commitment
to dissemination of their results. Stephen Davis spoke of the truly impressive list
of collaborators that ‘The Boyne Valley Landscape Project’ had accrued,
underlining the importance of the interdisciplinary nature of INSTAR. He also
discussed the job creation aspect of the project, and while there were no long
term jobs created, a number of short contracts were awarded. On top of this,
the project facilitated two PhD and two MA students. Davis also wished to
emphasise the more intangible, but no less important, benefits of capacity
building. The interdisciplinary scope of the project has changed how many of
those who participated in it now work and see the contributions that can be
brought by their colleagues. Dr. Aidan O’Sullivan told how EMAP had already resulted
in 32 public presentations, 20 publications, and one conference, along with
having funded, supported and facilitated various MA and PhD scholars. EMAP has
also made their reports directly available from their website. In Bhreathnach’s
summation of the ‘Mapping Death’ project she noted that it had employed five
part-time researchers, along with producing various published papers and
conference presentations. The ‘People of Prehistoric Ireland’ had similar
outputs, including the hard-copy libraries at QUB and UCC, along with a list of
both academic and popular publications and public presentations. Similarly, Stuijts,
in her summation of the achievements of the WODAN project, mentioned various
conference presentations (including one in Japan), four organised workshops,
one PhD thesis facilitated, along with the creation of one full-time and three
part-time research positions. The ‘Cultivating Societies’ project was similarly
prodigious, with various seminars organised and the employment of three
researchers. In particular, the ‘Cultivating Societies’ project will soon have
an issue of the prestigious Journal of Archaeological Science dedicated to its
work.

There is only one
thing that the various INSTAR projects have not done yet and that is to deliver
the major syntheses that have been promised. All of the speakers emphasised
their commitment to producing these volumes and, from what I can gather, the
texts are well advanced. If I was to isolate one theme that came from this
conference it would be that Irish archaeology as we knew it is over. While
these publications are pending, the ground is still reverberating and in shock.
But when they arrive and are digested, we will awake with new eyes and look
upon an unfamiliar landscape for the first time. I, for one, can’t wait.

As the major
theme of the conference was the relaying of the results from so many
imaginative projects, the data was, at times, flying thick and fast. I hope
that I have done justice to all of the speakers at the event and their projects.
Nonetheless, I do sincerely apologise if, in the rush to write notes and keep
up with the pace of delivery, I have misrepresented or misquoted anyone. If so,
please contact me and I will endeavour to set the record straight.

I realise that ‘Early
Medieval’ is the generally accepted term these days. However, as I have already stated, I dislike and distrust this neologism and refuse to use it. Throughout
this paper, I have used my preferred term: Early Christian.

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